CHAPTER XXVIII.
IN THE CAPTAIN'S GIG.
Dennis MacBride had done his best to provide for the necessities of the three remaining Anarchists with the short time at his disposal before the abandonment of the schooner. He had seized up and slung into the boat a cask of water. They had several bottles of spirits, a case of biscuits, and as many tins as he could lay hold of, in the hurry, of preserved meat; and that was all.
They had been now on the waste of waters twenty days without seeing a sail or a vision of land, and their limited stock of stores was exhausted, all except two bottles of rum. They had studied the strictest economy, limiting themselves to one biscuit per day, with one drink of the brackish water, qualified with the spirits and helped along with a flavouring of the preserved meat, suffering all the time inordinate pangs of hunger and thirst, with the fierce sun beating mercilessly upon them, and the pitiless glaring of that blue ocean.
The briny ozone, so health-producing and appetising
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